Salon: Donald Trump Symbol of ‘Conservative Zeitgeist’

On Wednesday I wrote about the Republican nightmare that is Donald Trump and argued that Trump was a Frankenstein-like monster that they themselves created. It appears Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, has just had his eureka moment regarding this problem. Or, perhaps more accurately, GOP donors have begun to sound the alarm bells.

According to this Washington Post story, Priebus reached out to Trump (quietly, of course) to urge him to “tone it down” a bit. Priebus and Republican financiers, the authors of the piece note, are concerned that Trump’s blend of bigotry and bombast “will set back the party’s efforts to rehabilitate its image and broaden its reach.” Particularly worrisome for party leaders is Trump’s immigration hysteria, which undermines the RNC’s efforts to garner more of the Hispanic vote.

(The New York Times then reported Trump’s side of the call, in which Priebus came off as less direct, and perhaps even a little intimidated by the man running near the top of the GOP polls.)

Trump really is the GOP’s worst nightmare: He’s loud, dumb, confident and independently funded. He isn’t becoming the face of the GOP – he is the face of the GOP. Trump’s political rise, it’s worth recalling, is neither an accident nor a mystery; it’s the inevitable result of a decades-long strategy to appeal to an increasingly white and nativist base. He’s a political monster born of the sordid union between Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Republicans have aligned themselves with these forces, and now they’re getting what they asked for – and then some.